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Education Week: Let's Abolish High School - 0 views

  • The first compulsory education law in the United States wasn’t enacted until 1852. This Massachusetts law required that all young people between the ages of 8 and 14 attend school three months a year—unless, that is, they could demonstrate that they already knew the material; in other words, this law was competency-based. It took 15 years before any other states followed Massachusetts’ lead and 66 years before all states did. Along the way, some powerful segments of society staunchly opposed the mandatory education trend. In 1892, for example, the Democratic Party stated as part of its national platform, “We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children.”
  • It wasn’t until the late 1800s that laws restricting the work opportunities of young people began to take hold. Those laws, too, were fiercely opposed, and in fact the first federal laws restricting youth labor—enacted in 1916, 1918, and 1933—were all swiftly struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
  • the idea that there should be limits on youth labor, or that young people shouldn’t be allowed to do any work, seemed outrageous to many people.
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  • , multiple forces—the desire to “Americanize” the tens of millions of immigrants streaming into the United States to get jobs in the land of opportunity, the effort to rescue millions of young laborers from horrendous working conditions in the factories and mines, the extreme determination of America’s growing labor unions to protect adult jobs, and, most especially, the extremely high unemployment rate (27 percent or so) during the Great Depression—created the systems we have today:
  • the dramatic changes
  • obliterated from modern consciousness the true abilities of young people, leaving adults with the faulty belief that teenagers were inherently irresponsible and incompetent.
  • after the 1930s, and increased dramatically after the social turmoil of the 1960s.
  • teenagers today are subject to 10 times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, to twice as many restrictions as are active-duty U.S. Marines, and even to twice as many restrictions as are incarcerated felons.
  • When adults see young people misbehaving or underperforming, they often respond by infantilizing young people even more, and the new restrictions often cause even more distress among our young.
Sheryl A. McCoy

n2teaching: Professional Opportunities in Times of Uncertainty - 0 views

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    Americans value mobility across the country and through the class ranks. This mobility remains especially important in times of economic stress. As educators, we can move to new schools or educational settings.
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    Many educators will need the support and ideas of their peers over the next few years.
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